Monthly Archives: February 2015

Valentine’s Day Meetup

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Valentine’s weekend was coming up.  The trailer was in the shop in Los Banos.  Roxie was in Sacramento for the week helping her sister with some health issues.  What was the plan?

The trailer was done, Roxie was finishing up her week so many we should meetup somewhere?  I would get the trailer and take it to a campground.  Roxie would alter her path home to meet me.  Sounds like some type of romance/clandestine novel plot.  But it wasn’t.  We just enjoy getting out in our trailer whenever we can.  Since it was already half way between us why bring it home and then go out again.

I left home early on Saturday and headed to Toscano’s RV in Los Banos.  I had dropped off the trailer for its’ final round of warranty repairs before our standard warranty stopped and our extended warranty kicked in.  I got there a bit after 10:30 and went over the list, got a propane tank filled, bought a few items and headed out to a campground somewhere.  Not quite sure which one but I had a primary one in mind.  Roxie had left Sacramento shortly before I got to Toscano’s so I knew I had some time.

On one of our trips to/from the bay area we scouted out the San Luis Creek campground just off of CA152 in the San Luis SRA.  It was far off the main road and had electric and water.  That is where I headed first with some other alternate plans in mind if I needed it.  Luckily I did not.  They had a spot for us and it was not a double spot.  Yes!  As I got to the spot and started backing in I realized what an asset it is to have Roxie helping be back in.  I must have got in and out of the truck 5-6 times looking where I was going and checking clearances.  Roxie, thank you for your help.

I got setup and Roxie showed up about 20 minutes later.  It was very nice to see her after a week away and it was Valentines Day!  We exchanged gifts and cards (she reminded me about Valentine’s the day before, but didn’t need to) and then went out for a lunch/dinner at a local BBQ place.  Very good.  After you have been married 34 years it doesn’t matter the location, just the company.

Here is our campsite (#33):

AS1 AS2

That evening we just vegged out but I saw this on Facebook:

Ken1

Hmmm.  Mercey Hot Springs.  We had always wanted to visit there…

Things change…

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I am sure my voluminous amount of blog readers have noticed that my retirement countdown clock has changed.  Some of you may even have your own version of this on your computer desktops, like I do, because you are SO worried about our retirement!

Some thinking has changed.

Our initial thinking was to retire as soon as I could from work and draw PERS retirement.  This would be 55 years of age which will happen this year (7/21/2015).  However to get the maximum health care benefits from my employer I had to be there for 30 years.  This would make the retirement date at 8/26/2015.  But to squeeze a bit more out of the retirement I should wait until the next quarter came around which then made the date 10/22/2015.  This was my carrot for years.

As the post title says, Things change…

The current thinking is to push the retirement date back on year to 10/22/2016 and the countdown now shows it.

Why push it back?  It will give us a bit more time to pay off some more debt to make retirement easier and more fun.  It will allow me to retire at a higher dollar amount due to being a bit older, having another year of service and maybe a higher base salary if we get a decent COLA this next fiscal year.

But there is one other factor.  I started working at my job in 1985.  I am still working in the same building and on the same floor as then.  Currently our office is in the middle of building a new location and I would like to see that project through and have some time in it.  Here is a picture of the building at the time of the blog post (click on the picture to get the current view):

 

Admin

So we hope all this will work out.  We will retire one of these days, with any luck it will be on the day the counter to the right of this page says!